


What Must Be Done

by Katana20034



Series: Marble Hornets: After The Fact [1]
Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Violence, Brian is a sweetheart, But also not, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Chapter 2 is post-entry 87, Death, Entry 80, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Happy Ending, Feels, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, I Don't Even Know, I apologize in advance, I'm Sorry, Just real sad, M/M, Sad, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, What Have I Done, Work In Progress, brim - Freeform, but it gets better, jaylex, mostly canon-compliant, okay I lied, tim is very tired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 04:07:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18683812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katana20034/pseuds/Katana20034
Summary: Idea: "What if Tim was there when Jay got shot?"Additional Idea: "What if Tim switched to Masky of his own free will for once?"And thus this fic was born.Some Jaylex angst for y'all, plus an angry Tim.I promise, there is a happy ending.





	1. No Choice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ObserverFuck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObserverFuck/gifts).



> A fic I wrote while bored at school.
> 
> I'm sorry in advance.

They’d gotten separated again. How could Tim have let this happen? It seemed that no matter how hard they all tried to stick together, they always ended up separated. This time it was just him and Jay, but nevertheless. As he ran through the building, he began to panic. What if the hooded figure had gotten to him first? Or worse, the Operator? He didn’t want to think about that part. 

Then, another thought crossed his mind. 

Alex. He’d seen no sign of the director anywhere, but it was still a possibility. Furthermore, he certainly couldn’t be trusted anymore, as unstable as he was. He knew going after Alex had been a bad idea, but if they didn’t do something soon, he could become a serious problem. 

And Brian. Where was he? Ever since what happened back when they were filming Marble Hornets, nobody had seen or heard from him. Tim missed him. At night, when the hallucinations and nightmares came, bits of memories from acts he couldn’t remember committing, he grasped at the space beside him on the bed, longing to find Brian there. However, he was alone. 

And now, he was alone again, running through the building, trying to find Jay before Alex did. Alex, driven pretty much insane, had already tried to kill Jay once. Then, Jay’s voice, echoing off the walls, coming from ahead of him. 

“Alex...Alex….?”

A gunshot rang out. 

Tim ran as fast as he could towards the sound. 

When he arrived, the scene before him made him nearly fall over in shock. 

Jay was on the floor, bleeding. Most likely dead. If he was still alive, he didn’t seem aware of his surroundings. Alex stood a short distance away. Holding a gun. It took only a matter of seconds for Tim to process what had happened. Alex stared at Jay. Tim stared at Alex. He still had the gun, and Tim was still exhausted from sprinting. It wasn’t that Tim was in bad shape, he was just tired. There was only one way he could think of that would give him the edge he would need to take on Alex right now. Yet, he’d never done it before. Usually, the thought of putting his mask on terrified him. Especially not being able to remember what happened. However, it seemed there was no other way he’d stand a chance against Alex. He’d just have to hope for the best. For Jay, for Brian, for everyone. Alex had to be stopped, and this was the only way.

While the director was distracted, Tim reached into his jacket. His hand gripped a familiar shape, one that typically was not present. It seemed the mask just appeared whenever it was needed. Now was not the time to dwell on that, however. He pulled it out, and Alex turned to face him, surprised, having just noticed him standing there.   
‘  
“Tim- Tim, listen-”

“No, you listen. This has gone too far, Alex. Someone has to stop you, and I guess it has to be me.”

“Tim, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I’d be more worried about yourself.” He held up the mask. 

“Tim, don’t-”

“What choice do I have?”

“You don’t understand-”

“No, you don’t understand. I don’t want to do this, but I don’t have that decision any more. Besides, I think it was bound to happen anyway, it might as well be of my own free will for once.”

“Tim I-” 

Tim didn’t hear the rest of Alex’s sentence. He pulled the mask on, bringing it down over his face. A familiar feeling rose up, though this time without the violent coughing fit that usually occurred. He felt his conscious shift, becoming unaware of reality around him. Then, his conscious itself changed. No longer Tim, but something different. Like him, but not. Tim’s consciousness faded, and it felt to him like blacking out. At the same time, the other conscious emerged and took over. Not Tim. Masky. As awareness returned, he quickly glanced around, assessing the situation. Then, his gaze trained on the man before him, the one holding a gun.

Alex panicked. As Tim- no, Masky’s- gaze fell upon him, he raised his gun and fired. Masky dove aside just as the shot rang out, Alex barely missing. He knew he’d have to kill Tim eventually anyways if he wanted to stop the spread of the Operator’s influence, but having to kill Jay had wracked him with distress and grief. He was still dazed, seemingly shocked by his own act of shooting Jay. Now, as he shot at Masky, he found that his hand would not steady. The thought of Jay’s terrified face still plagued his mind as the individual in question’s body lay bleeding upon the ground. 

He fired off a few more shots, Masky, weaving out of the way of them and closing in fast. He forgot just how fast Tim could move in this state. Out of options and out of bullets, Alex ran. He glanced behind him, and saw that, as he expected, he was being pursued. He took the first sharp turn he came across, then immediately turned down the next one. At a branching path in the hall, he took the right path, but tossed his gun in the direction of the left path, hoping to throw Masky off. 

As he ran down the darkened hall, the amount of light quickly decreased. It was getting darker and darker in the hallway, and Alex began to worry. The dark generally didn’t bode well for any of them. 

However, fortune seemed to be on his side today. When he glanced back again, Masky was no longer following, and he watched the figure going down the left hallway. His trick had worked, somehow. He ran for a while longer, then stopped against a wall to catch his breath. Once certain that the coast was clear, Alex made his way back to the room where he had shot Jay. 

The body was still there, a bloodied hand over the gunshot wound. His hat was slightly askew upon his head. Alex walked over and collapsed onto his knees in front of the body. He hadn’t wanted to do this. Not to Jay. But he didn’t have any choice. He put his arms around Jay’s lifeless body, holding him close. 

“You always did make stupid decisions…” he said, pushing Jay’s hat up slightly and smiling as tears began to well up. 

“Why did you have to come after me… This never would have happened if you’d just stayed away from me… Stayed safe, not gotten involved… Why, Jay… Why…”

Alex felt the tears fall from his cheeks. A few of them landed on the wound on Jay’s torso, mingling with the still-fresh blood. Alex cried and cried, holding Jay in his arms. After some time, just as a familiar static sound began to be heard in the distance, Alex passed out from grief and exhaustion, still holding Jay. 

When he awoke, his arms were empty. The building was quiet. And Jay was gone.


	2. Death Can Suck It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few months after the events of the final Entry, Alex wakes up in the woods. He knows he should be dead, but apparently he's not. And apparently, he's not alone.
> 
> (AKA: the promised fluff + happy ending)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters, one day? YOU BET. 
> 
> I hope this makes up for the angst in the last chapter, and I apologize for how short these chapters are.
> 
>  
> 
> I'm a die hard Jaylex and Brim shipper okay

Alex awoke in the woods, alone and cold. The last thing he remembered was Tim stabbing him to death. He looked down at himself, and found that what had previously been stab wounds were still there, but the blood had long dried. Then it dawned on him. 

He should be dead, Tim killed him. Yet here he was, in the woods, seemingly alive. Maybe he’d finally ended up in hell like he deserved, or maybe this was just some weird purgatory created by The Operator. Either way, he couldn’t see how he was alive now. 

At a loss for what else to do, Alex stood and walked. He walked for what felt like miles, eventually reaching the edge of the woods. He recognized this place now, the same woods in which so many things had gone wrong. He walked out, looking over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t being followed. No sign of anyone, not even The Operator. Alex breathed a sigh of relief. 

The second he turned around to continue walking, though, he found himself face to face with a figure he found vaguely familiar. It was clearly a guy, wearing a greenish-brown hoodie, and a mask that seemed somewhat similar to Masky’s, with dark circles around the eyes. The main difference in the mask was that rather than black lips, it had what seemed to be a depiction of a rectangle of teeth. It kind of reminded Alex of a skull, and he assumed that’s what it was supposed to look like. When the figure appeared in front of him, though, he jumped back in fear. It didn’t seem to be Tim or Brian, and Brian was dead anyways, so this had to be another person like them. He knew not who. The figure stared at him for a moment, and Alex seemed unsure whether he should run. These guys usually meant bad news, but this one didn’t seem to be aggressive towards him. At least, not at the moment. Besides, he already died once, what did he have to fear? 

“Um… hello…?” Alex said, looking at the stranger nervously. The masked figure said nothing, merely took a step towards him and tilted his head. 

“Do I… know you?” Alex tried again, hoping to figure out just what this stranger wanted from him. 

“You’re back,” the figure finally said, voice slightly muffled by the mask. He knew that voice, where did he know that voice from?  
“Uh, yeah. I’m Alex, Alex Kralie, though you probably already knew that. Who are you?”

The figure angled his head, seemingly at a loss. “Based on the other two’s names, I guess you could call me… Skully.” 

“The other two? Are you with Masky and Hoody?”

“You could say that. Not going to hurt you, though. No point, since Masky did already, and The Operator seems to have lost interest in trying to kill you at the moment.”

“Oh, well that makes me feel so much better.”

“Some part of me wants to strangle you for what you did to me, but- I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel right to kill you.”

“Uh… thanks? Wait- what I did to you? What did I do?”

Skully tilted his head. “You don’t remember, Alex?”

That got him. The way Skully said his name. Why did it strike such a familiar chord with him?

“Um.. no?”

Skully stared at him for a moment. Then, he took another step forward. And another. He was now only about a foot from Alex’s face. Alex leaned back slightly, uneasy, as Skully looked at him. Then, the newcomer reached up towards his mask. He gripped the edge with one hand, and reached behind his head with the other. Skully moved his mask aside, and Alex nearly fell backwards in astonishment. It was Jay. It couldn’t be possible, Jay was dead. 

“Holy- Jay…?”

“Seems you do remember me after all, huh?”

“How is this possible- I shot you!” Then it dawned on him. “Oh my god, I shot you! I forgot about that- Jay, I’m so sorry, I had no choice- I was trying to stop the Operator, and-”

“Alex, could you shut up for once?”

He did.

“Yeah, you shot me. I’ve still got the injury, technically,” Jay said, lifting his hoodie to show a small wound in his torso before pulling it back down. 

“So how are you alive?!” 

“Probably the same way you, Brian, and Tim are, or at least something similar. The Operator’s been keeping me and the other two ‘alive’ basically.”

“Are you saying you’re working for The Operator?”

“The three of us don’t have much choice. On the bright side, we rarely have to do much nowadays, mostly don’t get like, well, like this-” he gestured to his mask. “-nearly as often as we used to. So looks like your efforts at least did something. The Operator leaves us alone for the most part, except for infrequent occasions.”

Alex was baffled. “Are you saying he’s keeping me ‘alive’ too?”

“It’s possible, but I honestly don’t know.”

The two stood in silence for a moment. 

“Jay, I just- I just wanna say, I’m so sorry, for everything-”

“Don’t apologize. Everyone did some bad things, you’re not the only one at fault here.”

“Yeah but- but I shot you!”

“I’m willing to forgive you for that now that I have you back.”

Alex couldn’t believe what he was hearing. How could Jay forgive his killer?

“Wh-why would you forgive me?”

Jay pushed his mask further up onto the top of his head, before grabbing Alex by the shirt collar and pulling him close. Their lips met, and Alex’s eyes widened in shock. After Jay pulled back from the kiss, he folded his arms and met Alex’s astonished gaze. 

“Does that answer your question?”

“Uh… y-yeah…” Alex felt a smile cross his face and tears gather in his eyes. “I can’t believe you’re back… I thought I’d never see you again after what happened…”

“I’m glad to be back. And to have you back, too. Tim still kinda wants to kill you for what happened, but Brian’s been helping to keep him calm.”

“Well, I’m not surprised, after all the things I did to him and everyone else.”   
Jay stepped towards him again and took him by the hand. 

“Come on. Let’s get out of here and get you into some clean clothes. Spending all that time as a corpse in the woods has not treated you well, you stink.”

“How’d I end up that deep in the woods anyways?”

“The Operator teleported your body, I think. Anyways, stop avoiding the subject of the fact that you stink to high heaven. Let’s get you home.”

The two walked away from the woods, hand in hand.

Upon arriving at an unfamiliar house, one on the edge of town, Jay led Alex inside. Tim was laying on the couch, mask set aside on the coffee table. Brian had Tim’s head in his lap, his hood off, and his own mask pulled up onto his head, wearing it like a hat. Looks like everybody had been in their proxy state recently. Alex was a little unnerved by that, but chose to suppress it. Brian looked up when Alex and Jay came in, and a brief look of surprise crossed his face before fading. He waved at the two, before going back to looking down at Tim, who apparently was asleep. 

“Tim got new pills for us all, they help keep us from switching but they make him really tired for some reason. They’re not 100% effective, but they help. At least it helps him sleep, he’s been having a hard time with that lately. We all have been, honestly. Not just the nightmares and stuff, but other things keep us up too. In my case, I really missed you. Between the nightmares and not having you here, I barely got any sleep.”

“Well, maybe you and I can fix that problem tonight.” Alex smiled at Jay, and raised an eyebrow. Jay laughed slightly and looked at him. 

“I’d like that.”

As expected, when Tim eventually woke up, he was pissed for a bit, and the first thing he did upon running into Alex again was punch him hard across the jaw. A bit of yelling and lecturing later, and Brian doing his best to help Tim calm down, and he had pretty much gotten everything out of his system. Now calmed down, Tim welcomed Alex back before going to sulk in his room, and Brian went with him. Jay and Alex took the now empty couch, and Alex put an arm around the skinnier man’s shoulders. Jay leaned his head against Alex’s shoulder, and the two eventually fell asleep, Jay in Alex’s arms once again, where he truly belonged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you all liked this chapter, it was fun to write this fic! I apologize for how short it is. 
> 
> Would you guys like me to write a sequel in the future? I might.
> 
> Anyways, I hope this was okay, I kind of rushed to get this done. Might revise stuff later.
> 
> I'm glad I finally got to write a fic for this fandom, and hope to do so again soon!
> 
> Kudos and comments appreciated, constructive feedback especially! <3


End file.
